Push or Pull? An Empirical Analysis of the Demand for Individual Project Grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation

This study empirically analyses, on the basis of a panel of grant requests to the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), to what extent the growth of the tertiary education system has contributed to the rapid rise in applications for research grants during the past several years and whether the given structures of research funding agencies and the funding possibilities they offer might also be a factor for the strong increase in grant applications. From the results it can be concluded that the different scientific disciplines react in very different ways to the institutional and financial framework conditions set by the funding agency. Regarding the expansion of the tertiary educational system it can be concluded that it has an impact on research funding in the form of two contrary influences. These two effects offset each other to the extent that they do not suffice to explain the rising trend in terms of the number of requests observable as from the year 2000